A conveying device that utilizes a friction-driven conveying traveling body includes a conveying traveling body, which includes a load bar for friction drive that is continuous across its total length, and a friction drive means, which is disposed at a travel path flank and drives the conveying traveling body to travel by a friction drive wheel in pressure contact with the load bar, and those of various configurations, using a wagon type conveying traveling body that supports a conveyed object at an upper side or a trolley type conveying traveling body that suspends a conveyed object at a lower side, etc., are known.
Generally with such a type of conveying device that utilizes a friction-driven conveying traveling body, friction drive wheels of the friction drive means are aligned at intervals substantially equal to the total length of the load bar along the travel path of the conveying traveling body to not only enable conveying traveling bodies to travel while maintaining an arbitrary interval but also enable, in a travel path region not equipped with the friction drive means, all conveying traveling bodies inside the travel path region to be driven by being pushed from the rear by a conveying traveling body sent into the travel path region by a friction drive means at an entrance of the travel path region. Further, a configuration, where each conveying traveling body is equipped with a linking means that enables longitudinally adjacent conveying traveling bodies to be linked to each other as necessary, is known, for example, by way of Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2006-117079 (Patent Literature 1). The linking means described in Patent Literature 1 can be utilized, when the sending-in of a conveying traveling body into the region for rear-pushing drive cannot be performed, as a means by which a conveying traveling body remaining in the region for rear-pushing drive is towed and forcibly pulled out from the region for rear-pushing drive by a conveying traveling body sent out by a friction drive means at an exit side of the region. A configuration, where, by keeping the linking means in an unlinked state, respective conveying traveling bodies can be made to travel by friction drive in a condition where the load bars of longitudinally adjacent conveying traveling bodies are abutted against each other, as in a conventional conveying device without the above type of linking means, is also described in Patent Literature 1.